On the Roadkill, with Jack (and Bill and Neal).

Got up this morning. ABC for me. Checked out the IP, good stuff, cool stuff. Gonna lay down some curlicues and descenders on the paper, with my trusty Remington. Damn! Ain't I punctuated already? No prize for this effort, says Mr Cassady! Maybe I'll make like Bill and take myself in hand until the Pure Electric O. Should've called them (and maybe me) the Beat-off Generation. Coffee. Walked the dogs after the getting up thing. Were those guys so domesticated? Idon'tthinkso. Gotta have coffee. The only thing the Beats and I have in common is the lizards. Still, Jack had the mojo, why not follow his advice?

Spontane – spontay- spontai – spontaneous prose. How spontaneous is that, man?

Okay, number one... “scribbled notebooks”, yup. Got them, can't read them though. “Wild typewritten pages”? Listen, Ghost of Jack – I lied about the Remington. I've got an obsolete computer. You'd have loved it... maybe. (Don't tell anyone, it kills the spont- spontan: the noun related to that word up there). Well, ok, it's for my (yr) own joy – nobody else likes it, anyway.

Two: “Submissive to everything, open, listening”. Hell, Jack you sound like a goddamn swinger! Here in Southern Spain you don't want to contemplate that: Bingo wings and beer bellies. Uh-uh.

Never try to get drunk outside yr own house? Whattahellya talkin' about Jack? Never try to get out of the house before you're drunk, maybe. All the same, gotta go out and meet (other) drunks, who you going to write about, else?

“Be in love with yr life”. A misprint? Don't think so, after all Bill shot Joan, buddy. Hmm... in love with my life? Parts of it, maybe.

“Something that you feel will find its own form”. Well, duh, this is just aping yours, Uncle Jack. Why'd I start this, this ain't a normal day for me. Except, of course, I'm wasting time writing crap.

Six. “Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind”. Six is a lucky number, as in you'll be damn' lucky if you know what the hell that means, I sure don't. Be sane geniusdevil of the soul. Hell, I can make this up too, Jack.

Next. “Blow as deep as you want to blow “. Mr K, you have genito-oral issues. You still anally retentive up there in writer heaven?

“Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.' Hell, I'm really glad you're dead, Jackie-O. We could fall out and I wouldn't trust ya with guns in the house. Reckon I'll just write what I want off the top of my head, if that's ok with you.

Number nine: “The unspeakable visions of the individual”. Hey, you are a pervert. And I ain't writing mine, not even here on ABCTales, my man.

This is a beauty, Mr Kerr-oooh-ack. “No time for poetry but exactly what is”. No idea what you talk about but roughly why do? That sounds like you chose the wrong door at reception, and nothing to do with something that rhymes with that, I gotta say.

“Visionary tics shivering in the chest”. Hey Beat Boy! That's crazier than the lizards. What do you mean what lizards? You mean you didn't see lizards? What kind of Junkies were you and Bill? Still, insect prophets in side a treasure-filled box, you da man!

“In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you”. Aw.. c'mon. It's a cup of coffee in front of me, not Bill's Steely Dan. I'm gonna get famous writing about a java?

Unlucky 13: “Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition” U-huh. Yep, sound advice ABC-ers and I'll see you in the soup kitchens when we've spent the money we earn from writing. Listen, Ghost of Jack, I like you and all, but y'know... I'd just like to get something published.

“Like Proust be an old teahead of time”. What's that smell? Sponge cake? Naww... hash brownies.

Half way. Have you had enough yet? “Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog”. InthebeginningwasthewormandthewormwasGod. Pshaw!!! I like pshaw, I don't think you'll find it in On The Road.

Downhill now, 16 hmm... glad we've reached 16, now it's legal! “The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye”. My eye! That's eyewash – reckon you boys were just interested in the Jap's eye, not the third, myself.

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself”. Way to go, good for your friend Mr Old Bull Lee! Only, teensy-weensy itsy bitsy yellow polka-dot bikini-sized quibble. How about some amazement for the reader, huh?

We're all grown-up now, we're at number 18: “Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea”. Are you taking the pith, Jacko? Throw me a goddamn' lifebelt, Moondog!

“Accept loss forever.” Okay, I'll do that, but less of the Hallmark, Jack-Be-Nimble, what the hell has that got to do with resolving the plothole in my novel, tellmethatwhydontcha?

Saved a good one for 20, dincha? “Believe in the holy contour of life.” Yeah, right. Did you join the Moonies, before you went?

21 today. (It is still today, isn't it? I started writing today, but this stuff is mind-expanding, I now have no concept of time. Nor do you, if you're still reading). “Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind”. Now I don't want an argument J-fucking-K, but goddamn' if it don't seem to me,if it's a flow intact in mind, I won't need a struggle of any kind. There, look whatcha made me do! Man, I h a t e poetry.

That majoun was strong stuff... hey! Only one letter more and we got majnoun... that's arabic for mad. I think one of Bill's Moroccan boys wrote this one. “Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better”.

“Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning”. I can't remember what year it is now. This was supposed to be about a typical day, I could follow all this advice but I don't think I'd ever write again. (“Good!” FTSE100).

“No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge”. Dignity? Dignity! Oh, man.

“Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it.” Yr exact pictures. He'd have loved txtspk, Jacky-Boy, for sure. He's saved two key-strokes. Did he have a Remingtn, an Livetti, an Nderwd?

“Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form”. That's high-concept thinking, that is.

“In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness.” Mr Kerouac, I'm losing the will to live, and so are the people reading this. Did you do the cut-ups thing? Any codfish bolthole in the analysis, you know?

Nearly home. “Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better”. From under what? The influence? Yeah, the crazier the better, got that one “write”, brother.

El penultimo, the last drink you buy in a Spanish bar. Never buy the last, no-one wants to invite Death to the party. Anyway, “You're a Genius all the time”. Thank you Mr K, but no, I'm not.

30! Thank God. Shit, how appropriate. “Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven”. Not me, Jack. Thanks for the advice, but no thanks.

But thanks for side-tracking me. Why would I write about a typical day? Who'd read it? Thanks for making me write something. There's a cold beer waiting for me on a copper-topped bar. Salud.

http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/kerouac.html